This is part of an article from the Suburbanite Economist, dated 2/1/61. Fair Play for Cuba is best remembered by one of its former supporters, Lee Harvey Oswald.

ROSSEN TAKES OVER ASHLAND AVE. THEATER

John A. Rossen, chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba committee, is president of a corporation operating the American theater at 8 N. Ashland, it was disclosed this week. Rossen is the former Communist party organizer who once operated the Cinema Annex theater near Kedzie and Madison, which specialized in the showing of Russian films, many criticized as being Red propaganda.

Rossen, who was a columnist for the Daily Worker, Russian propaganda newspaper, also publishes the Maverick, a pro-Communist newspaper. Rossen is listed as president of Empresas Latinas Inc., chartered April 12, 1960, to show Latin and Spanish films at the American theater. Julio Partillo is secretary-treasurer and Fred Rodrigues is manager. Both were associated with Rossen at the Senate theater after he left the Cinema Annex.

Just a nostalgia note, this theater was situated a trifle north of
the Madison,Ashland and Ogden intersection where there was an old early skyscraper on that little island that hosted the revolving Turtle Wax turtle.

This was a remarkable building. Mahler and Cordell were certainly paying attention to what was going on in Midwestern architecture during the period. I don’t know of any other theater that displays so much of the Prairie style. It’s too bad this one has been lost.